My mother is 75, and adorable (as you can see) and in addition to these attributes, she’s recently decided to become a Public Menace. This, I’m convinced, is because she’s currently between men. This is a state of affairs she hasn’t had much experience with since it’s happened only a few times in her life. Usually when one man is starting to show some serious wear and tear, the Next One is being groomed in the wings and is ready to step in.

Believe me, I don’t know how this works, exactly. But perhaps due to some shift in the earth’s atmosphere or perhaps a cosmic scheduling mishap, life has thrown her this moment of free time.

Which somehow has translated to mean she needs a motorized scooter. 

She walks perfectly well, you understand; I’ve recently even seen her dance. But it’s a little known fact that there is a lot of peer pressure in retirement communities. And in the one where she lives–in Florida–if somebody has a groovy new scooter, everyone else soon has to have one, too. Apparently, you’re just a big nobody if you can’t cruise along on your scooter to the Albertson’s across the street. Only sissies and pansies walk.

I advised against a scooter, I want you to know. For safety reasons.

But then she borrowed one from one of her fabulously wealthy, up-to-date friends who has scooters of every color, scooters, in fact, to match all of her outfits, and yesterday was my mother’s maiden voyage across the eight-lane road to the grocery store.

It did not go well. By her own account of things, she pretty much took out the whole store. First, she knocked over a display of pickles, drove headlong into three posts, banged into two elderly people who were examining cabbages, had a head-on collision with another scooter, and was finally escorted out by the manager.

Now she says she doesn’t want a scooter anymore.

“What do you want?” I said. Thinking: a little push cart, non-motorized, for carrying home her groceries? Perhaps a nice new pair of sneakers for walking across the street in a hearty, rapid, meaningful way?

“Well, I guess it’s time to find a new man, one who’ll do the grocery shopping,” she said.